I collect quotations. I have a word document into which I paste my favourites.
Behold!
Words are the physicians of a mind diseased.
-Aeschylus
It has been said that writing comes more easily if you have something to say.
-Sholem Asch
Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.
-Francis Bacon
First publication is a pure, carnal leap into that dark which one dreams is life.
-Hortense Calisher
A good book is the purest essence of a human soul.
-Thomas Carlyle
Bookshops are the one University everyone can enter.
-Tony Benn
The true university of these days is a collection of books.
-Thomas Carlyle
There is one last thing to remember: writers are always selling somebody out.
-Joan Didion
There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing.
-Isaac D’Israeli
Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.
-Jessamyn West
Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness.
-Georges Simenon
Nick’s words reverberated in her head again. “The pages are terrific. Keep going. And don’t look back,” he had told her. And then, more thoughtfully, he had added: “Listen, kid, you’ve got talent. But talent isn’t enough. You’ve also got to have dedication, discipline, determination and drive. You’ve got to be obsessed with a book. Without that obsession it won’t work. And there’s another D. D for desire. That must be there too. You’ve got to want to write more than you want to do anything else, and you’ve got to be prepared to make sacrifices to do it.” He had grinned in his impish way. “There’s a sixth D, and this one is vital. D for distraction, the enemy of every writer. You’ve got to build an imaginary wall around yourself so that nothing, no one intrudes. Understand me, kid?”
-Barbara Taylor Bradford, Voice of the Heart
Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training.
-Anna Freud
The urge to write is also the fear of death – the need to leave messages saying “I was here, I saw it too.”
-Laurie Lee
Nulla dies sine linea.
Not a day without a line.
-Pliny the Elder
Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends and society are the natural enemies of a writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking.
-Laurence Clark Powell
If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.
-Toni Morrison
When I am dead,
I hope it may be said:
“His sins were scarlet,
but his books were read.”
-Hilaire Belloc
Every writer, without exception, is a masochist, a sadist, a peeping Tom, an exhibitionist, a narcissist, an injustice collector and a depressed person constantly haunted by fears of unproductivity.
-Edmund Bergler
